Chapter 635 - Side Story: Tower Of Ascension (part 2/3)

The tower loomed in the distance.

At some point, the surrounding area turned so hot, that the living flesh scalded off the young man's bones. Yet, he continued to march. Pushed by nothing but his sheer will, he pressed forward, set on uncovering the mysteries that plagued him.

"Who am I?" Speaking without a sound, the young man made a step. His bones started to catch fire.

"Where am I?" Under the force of intense hit, his bones started to corode. Rather than melting away, their solid material was just sizzling away at this point.

"What is this place?" The young man's skeleton failed. Yet he continued forward. Leaving behind a pile of bone-dust, his exposed soul refused to buckle.

"And what is this feeling?" The young man could clearly sense the constant feeling of urgency, the constant afterecho of the words he experienced before.

There was something attracting him to the tower in the distance, not by pulling him towards it, but by eliminating all the other choices of action. It was as if reaching that tower was a fate he was destined for.

Then, the young man finally reached the place.

In one moment, the tower still stood in the distance, no different from a needle sticking out of the ground. Then, in the next second, all the hellish heat disappeared with the young man's body appearing once again.

But his feet didn't stop. Not wasting even a single moment to check his situation, the young man moved the last few steps forward before placing his hand on the cold stones that the enormous tower was made of.

"What is this thing?" The pestering feeling of familiarity was both killing and sparking the young man's motivation over and over again. Even though he had no idea what this place or tower was, his legs somehow knew where to go.

After walking around the circumvention of the tower for a long while, the young man finally reached its entrance. While with some insane athletic abilities one could enter through one of the windows above, the young man walked directly towards the huge gate instead. Yet, rather than attempting to push this monstrosity of a door open, he moved to the side of the gate, pressing his hand against one of the many stones its walls were made off.

Click.

Under the strength of the young man's hand alone, the massive gate suddenly pried open. Sucking the huge walls of wood reinforced with iron slabs inside, the entrance to the tower now stood open to the intruder.

"Right here… I think?" Moving forward, the young man entered the tower only to instantly take a sharp turn right and start climbing the stairs.

A simple motion of moving up. One that everyone in a civilised world was accustomed to. But only now did the young man understood how challenging it actually was.

At first, it was only exhaustion. Tiredness born from the nutrients drying up in his body. While the first few floors were easy to climb, once the young man's heigh position reached two digits, climbing to just the next level turned into a nightmare.

But the young man prevailed.

Forcing his pained body to move forward, he continued his climb without a single word, a single moan of protest.

The task of climbing the tower turned out to be endless. No matter for how long the young man continued to climb the stairs, the endpoint of his journey was nowhere to be seen. Without any markings or carvings on the walls to discern his current position, the young man have long lost the orientation in just how many levels did he climb.

Then, something strange happened.

Right on the young man's path, the circular stairway suddenly stopped.

It was clear that it wasn't the intent of the creator of this place. Many leftover markings of fighting gave testimony to the reason behind the destruction of a huge portion of the stairs. Yet, even in spite of how devastated this place was, the young man didn't stop.

Starting to run out of nowhere, the young man increased his momentum. Ignoring the seering pain in his muscles, he reached the greatest sopeed he could… And he jumped.

The stairs were destroyed. A huge chunk of a stable footing was missing, making it impossible to climb the tower anymore. But what was even worse, was the fact that even  huge chunk of the wall was gone as well!

Surrounded by nothing but the wind fluttering in his ears, the young man flew over the gap, desperately reaching towards one of the beams formerly supporting the staircase. Below him, an endless gap leading straight to where he came from.

And only now, the young man had a chance to realise just how high he managed to climb so far.

Catch.

His fingers desperately sank into the hard stone of the beam, preventing his hand from slipping off the support. With haggard surface of the broken beam tearing the skin on his fingers apart, the young man barely noticed the inconvenience. After pulling himself up, his monotone journey to the top resumed.

Looking back, the young man cast his eyes at the enormous gap in the tower's wall. It wasn't insurmountable, it wasn't threatening to collapse the entire structure either. But looking at it with his lively eyes, the young man could help but be curious just what caused such destruction.

Then, his thoughts vaned away as the young man once again started walking up. Unbothered by the blood trickling down from his injured hands, he continued to move upwards, as if it was the one thing that would ever have any meaning.

And then, he reached a set of simple doors.

Pushing them open, the young man finally saw the world in the full scope of its natural beauty. With the sights cut off only by a huge terrace hanging off the side of the tower, a figure of a senile old man appeared right on the edge of the platform, sitting atop something like an offering altar.

The young man took a step forward.

Suddenly, the runes carved all over the platform lit up. The old man turned his head around.

"You finally made it here, huh?"